In Iraq, Strategic Failures

By Jim Hoagland

The Washington Post

Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A23

George W. Bush and John Kerry have been trading questions about their past
views and actions on Iraq. Their campaign exchange is worse than pointless --
it is a distraction from the debate they should be having about Iraq's present
and future.

Such a debate might force Bush to recognize that he is
losing his moral and pragmatic bearings in Iraq as his administration dilutes
its commitment to democracy and the rule of law there. And it might force Kerry
to spell out a clear, realistic alternative to the current miasma, if he has
one.

The candidates' obligations and options are not equal, of course.
The president's decisions are not couched in the tactical subjunctive, as are
Kerry's promises. Iraq, the United States and for that matter the rest of the
world all live with the consequences of Bush's words -- if he sticks to them.

Last fall the president gave three stirring speeches in which he vowed
to end 60 years of reflexive American support for repression by Arab
governments: Morality and pragmatism required Washington to support democracy
in the region. Iraq would be the model.

But Bush's priorities seem to
be different today, as his administration engages in or condones cynical
maneuvering designed not to create democracy in Baghdad but to create political
cover at home and fear and turmoil in Tehran.

Simultaneous U.S.
military assaults on Shiite rebels in Najaf, a new and brutal power play in
Baghdad against that ever troublesome Shiite politician Ahmed Chalabi, and the
temporary suppression of critical news coverage by al-Jazeera satellite
television this week have established the fact that "stability" of the Arab
strongman kind is again tolerated at the White House.

Long backed by the
CIA, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is now supporting the U.S. intelligence
agency's closely related campaigns to destroy Chalabi and use Iraq to subvert
Iran's ruling Shiite ayatollahs.

The agency is determined to protect its
all-important liaison relationships with Sunni Arab governments in Jordan, Egypt
and Saudi Arabia, which fear the Shiite majorities in Iran and Iraq. That is
the decisive background to the appalling choice of priorities for the use of
military and judicial power that Bush at least implicitly condones in Iraq.

Baathist killers and Wahhabi terrorists go unarrested, unprosecuted and
unchallenged in the streets of Fallujah, Ramadi and Sunni sections of Baghdad.
At the same time the ragtag Shiite militia of Moqtada Sadr triggers an all-out
U.S. assault in Najaf that risks damaging some of the holiest shrines of the
Shiite branch of Islam, for small strategic gain.

Sadr deserves no
sympathy. U.S. miscalculation is almost entirely responsible for turning this
insignificant demagogue into a rebel with a following. Shiites, who are still
bitter and distrustful of the United States for its failure to support their
uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991, are likely to note the disparity of
treatment of the Sunni and Shiite insurgencies, and to conclude that Shiite
political will is the true target of the Najaf operation.

The fact
that Allawi is by heritage a Shiite will not reduce the sting of his approving
the operation. An ex-Baathist, he has always made his career in Sunni-dominated
power structures.

The timing of the latest burst of specious charges
and allegations against Chalabi, his nephew Salem and his political party also
suggests, at a minimum, a highly selective use of limited resources.

Chalabi, whom I have known and written about for 30 years, has made a large
number of necessary and unnecessary enemies in his long campaign to bring down
the Baathists and then to keep them from returning to power. Among the
unnecessary and unforgiving enemies was L. Paul Bremer, Bush's proconsul in
Baghdad during the formal U.S. occupation and a man quick to see a hidden
Iranian hand in Iraq's problems.

This past spring Bremer collaborated
with Bush's National Security Council staff on a seven-page memorandum that
outlined a strategy for marginalizing Chalabi. This exercise has now been
relentlessly brought to fruition while arrests and prosecutions of insurgents
have gone unpursued.

Bremer created a secret court, appointed a
manifestly unprepared jurist to head it and made sure Iraq's interim government
could not disband it after the U.S. administrator left. It is this judge,
Zuhair Maliky, who issued a warrant for the arrest of Chalabi while he was --
guess where? -- in Tehran.

Chalabi's fight with other Iraqi factions in
Baghdad is his business. But the Bush team petulantly stakes American prestige,
credibility and honor on a covert campaign of score-settling against Chalabi,
Sadr and any other Shiites who might be influenced by Iran, while terrorists
reign in Fallujah. This is not strategy; this is folly.